


Shut up and let me hold you

by shysweetthing



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 02:56:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8951134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shysweetthing/pseuds/shysweetthing
Summary: “How can you tell me to return to the ice while saying you’re retiring?” As Victor spoke, his anger flared into something just a little darker. Something just a little possessive, and Yuuri was usually the possessive one between them. Victor found himself closing the distance between them, grabbing hold of Yuuri’s leg. Yuuri shrank back—a centimeter—but Victor followed. Their noses brushed. Their lips were so close that when Victor spoke, it was almost a kiss.“Yuuri, how am I supposed to skate my heart out when you are my heart?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> A note on episode 12 timing: Victor and Yuuri argue in their hotel room at night. And yet Yuuri's voiceover saying that they've each decided to make their own decisions after the free skate is in the morning...almost as if that decision takes quite a while. Stéphane Lambiel even makes a point of saying that Yuuri skipped practice in the days between the short program and the free skate.
> 
> I’d like to imagine that this is how Victor and Yuuri spent that missing time...

“After the final, let’s end this.”

The hotel room had been humid after Victor’s shower. Suddenly, it seemed too hot, too confining. Victor looked over from where he sat on the window ledge, hoping he’d misheard.

He saw nothing but Yuuri. Yuuri, with his dark, beautiful brown eyes and his calm smile and his muscled thighs. Yuuri, who was shy and sweet up until the point when he was…not, and God, how Victor loved him for all of it. Yuuri, whose hands were clenched in front of him.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. “Huh?”

Yuuri wouldn’t look at him. “You’ve done more than enough for me, Victor. Thanks to you, I was able to give everything I had to my last season.”

Last season. What the hell was that idiot talking about, _last season?_ And _my_ last season? This was _their_ season. Together.

“Thank you for everything, Victor,” Yuuri said formally. He even gave Victor a bow, as if he were speaking to a teacher instead of his fiancé. “Thank you for being my coach.”

Victor’s chest constricted. For one brief second, Hasetsu flashed through his mind—the beach, the cries of the gulls, the spray of salt when the water crashed against the beach. He could almost hear Yuuri’s delighted laughter when a sleeper wave knocked him off his feet, could almost feel the sea stinging his eyes as he struggled to stand.

But no. If Yuuri was ending things, there would be no more Hasetsu. No more Yuuri.

The room blurred around him as if the spray of Hasetsu’s ocean were stinging his eyes. Fuck; those were tears. He couldn’t control them, sliding down his face.

Yuuri looked over at him. “Victor?” He sounded surprised. _Surprised._

“Damn.” Victor didn’t care if he cried. “I didn’t expect Katsuki Yuuri to be such a selfish human being.”

Yuuri just nodded. “Right. I made this selfish decision on my own. I’m retiring.”

The gold band on Victor’s finger was new—so new, he still felt its weight there. It had been a comforting presence all through Yuuri’s short program. Victor had flaunted it defiantly to the world— _I’m his, I’m his, he wants me._

He’d spent nearly twenty-eight years without the ring, and one day with it. Still, he suspected that if he took it off, he’d feel its absence all his life.

He wasn’t going to try to hide how he felt just so Yuuri would feel better about…whatever it was he was doing. Victor’s tears continued to flow.

Yuuri leaned forward and brushed Victor’s hair to the side. The gesture was sweet, almost tender. It was a lover’s touch against his forehead, entirely out of place for a man who was shattering his heart.

Victor glared at his lover through his tears. “Yuuri, what are you doing?”

“I’m just surprised to see you cry.”

“I’m mad, okay?” Victor shoved Yuuri’s hand aside.

Yuuri pulled back, stung. “You’re the one who said this was only through the Grand Prix Final.”

Yes. He’d said something like that eight months ago. _Eight goddamn months ago._ Just last month, he’d told Yuuri he wanted forever.

“I thought you needed my help more…”

Yuuri didn’t even flinch. “Aren’t you going to make a comeback? You don’t have to worry about me.”

He didn’t have to _worry_ about him? When they were _engaged?_ Mad didn’t begin to describe how Victor felt. He was furious. He was exasperated. He was…

He was heartbroken. “How can you tell me to return to the ice while saying you’re retiring?” As he spoke, his anger flared into something just a little darker. Something just a little possessive, and Yuuri was usually the possessive one between them. Victor found himself closing the distance between them, grabbing hold of Yuuri’s leg. Yuuri shrank back—a centimeter—but Victor followed. Their noses brushed. Their lips were so close that when Victor spoke, it was almost a kiss.

“Yuuri, how am I supposed to skate my heart out when you are my heart?”

He’d thought that after all this time, with Yuuri at his side, his heart had healed. Now, that organ felt wounded—more bruised than he’d been the months he practiced his quad flip landing and missed, and missed, and missed.

He was missing now, landing painfully on the ice.

Yuuri just looked up at him in wide-eyed confusion. “I don’t understand,” he whispered.

Victor’s fingers dug into the other man’s thigh. “Damn you, Yuuri. You understand perfectly well what I’m talking about. If you so much as mention katsudon after everything that’s happened between us—”

Yuuri shook his head. ”No. I don’t understand. Are you saying you can’t skate anymore because you love me? That we have to break up for you to return to skating?”

Victor blinked. The room seemed suddenly very small. Very silent. His fingers froze, still clenched in the muscle of Yuuri’s leg.

Victor knew that leg. He could describe every fiber of that muscle. He’d stretched it out when Yuuri's quads were tight, massaged it when Yuuri overworked himself. He’d kissed it after Yuuri’s short program in China, licked his lover everywhere in a haze of lust.

He knew every inch of Yuuri’s body. He knew his every expression. And that…that look in Yuuri’s eyes, that dazed look of hurt and confusion…

Victor cleared his throat. “You’re not…you’re not breaking up with me?”

Yuuri exhaled. He put his hand on top of Victor’s. “Victor.” His voice was low, almost caressing. “That was the _entire point_ of what I just said. We can’t both skate. You’d go back to Russia and work with Yakov. I know how much you admire him. I’d have to find another coach who would probably live halfway round the world, and…who would believe in me the way you have?”

“Everyone,” Victor said with a rough shake of his head. “Anyone worth having would see that you’re a genius.”

Yuuri touched his fingers to Victor’s lips. His head dropped; his forehead touched Victor’s chest. “I’m retiring because I want to be with you.”

His heart. Oh, god, his heart. It still felt battered, but now it felt battered for them both. Victor reached out and slowly, slowly, tipped Yuuri’s chin up.

Yuuri’s body moved like music, but his eyes… They made Victor think of a descending arpeggio now, notes falling in a minor key. Yuuri’s eyes glistened. Slowly, softly, Victor brought his thumb up to wipe away a tear.

“It’s what I want,” Yuuri said.

“Why are you crying, then?”

Yuuri sniffled. “Because I know how much you love skating. I’ve watched you on the ice when I’m late to practice in the morning. You go out there and you move as if it’s your entire world. You’re so engrossed in it that you don’t notice me come in. I can see the way it makes you smile.”

Victor knew it, too. It was the way Victor smiled for Yuuri—as if his whole world was opening up. As if his blades on the ice were like sunlight.

“Your skating is like prayer. It’s the thing you hold most sacred in the world. How could I take that from you and claim to love you?”

Every word Yuuri said was true. And yet…

Skating was sacred for them both. It had been like that before they met, but it was more true now than ever before. Their time on the ice was something special—music and prayer made from ice and blades.

Victor wiped away another one of Yuuri’s tears. Leaned in, and placed a kiss against Yuuri’s cheek. “So how am I supposed to take skating away from you, when it’s the same for you?”

Yuuri shuddered. “You weren’t supposed to _take_ it. I was determined to _give_ it.”

Stupid, stupid, stupid. So stupid—and so sweet—that Victor almost forgot how mad he was. Somehow, they’d become entangled—Victor’s arms around Yuuri, Yuuri’s head resting against his shoulder.

“As gifts go,” Victor said eventually, “I liked the ring better.”

“Me too.” Yuuri raised Viktor’s hand to his mouth. Set his lips against his ring finger. Kissed it. “But it was supposed to be the same present. Me.”

“Next time,” Victor said dryly, “ask me if I want that particular present before wrapping it up and handing it over.”

“ _Do_ you want it? Do you want to skate again?”

Victor wanted to say no. He wanted to say that the urge to compete on ice hadn’t tugged at him these past months. He wanted to lie and say that he was done with his career. But they’d passed the point of lies between them long before now, and if there was one thing that was more sacred to him than skating, it was this man.

“Yes,” Victor whispered. “I wonder…sometimes. How I’d skate now that I’m in love. I was empty when I came to you, and now I’m full again. You taught me to love skating again. Now that it’s not strangling me any longer…”

“Then have it,” Yuuri said softly. “I’ll retire. I’ll be your good luck charm. I love skating, but it’s hard. When I skate, I’m constantly aware of all my weaknesses, all my mistakes. It might be a relief to quit.”

It was the sweetest gift Victor had ever been offered. Skating. Love. Life. Everything all at once. But how could he take it, knowing it would empty Yuuri out?

Victor exhaled. “No. No. We can’t do it like this. Don't think about what I will do. If you’re going to be selfish, do it for yourself. If you think you’ve finished with skating after your free program, then…finish. Because it is what you want most for yourself. Not because you think I’ll want it for you. I never want you to be unhappy. Not in the smallest way.”

“And you?”

“There’s joy in coaching, too,” Victor said carefully. “And choreographing. I’ll always have the joy of skating in some way. Hell, even without you to coach, I could decide not to return.”

“But you might.”

Their heads touched. “Yes.” The weight of everything he wanted scared Victor. “I might.”

“Then decide the same way. Don’t think of what I would do. Make your own decision after my free skate program. Once we’ve both come to a decision, we’ll tell each other.”

That hurt, too, in a searing way—a way that was right, no matter how painful. To make this one decision apart… It could break them in two. It could mean that Victor saw Yuuri as often as he’d seen Makkachin during his prior skating seasons—a few days at the end of weeks of travel.

It was the right thing to do, and it hurt.

“We decide the day after tomorrow.” Yuuri inhaled, and then looked up at him. “But tonight, and tomorrow…”

Victor’s hands closed on Yuuri’s shoulders. “Tonight,” Victor said, “I’m still your coach. And we can’t risk your straining any muscles before your free skate.”

Yuuri gave him a wicked smile. “Can’t we?”

As if Victor could ever deny him anything when he smiled like that. He tried anyway. “I mean it, Yuuri.”

“Well.” Yuuri’s voice was husky. “There’s no need for me to disobey you.”

“No?”

“Of course not. You know how to ride me just fine.”

#

After Yuuri had taken Victor to pieces, after he’d wrung every last cry of pleasure from his lover… They’d cleaned up and kissed again and turned out the lights. Now they lay together on the bed they shared, Victor’s arms around Yuuri’s naked shoulders.

“I’m still mad at you, you know,” Victor said.

Yuuri sighed. “I know. I still love you.”

“Retiring.” Victor sounded positively disgusted. “What would you even do, stuck in St. Petersburg with me, if you retired from skating?” 

It was a big city. Surely there was something for Yuuri to do there besides professional ice skating. But arguing about something as prosaic as a job on the eve of the free skate seemed foolish.

So Yuuri just smiled and sat up. The city lights from the window were bright enough that he could still see his lover’s body outlined in the sheets. “Well, I had planned to make a career selling pictures of the great Victor Nikiforov to the skating otaku.”

Victor stared up at him in disbelief.

Yuuri made a picture frame, each hand forming an opposing corner. He held it just off-center on Victor, close in so he could capture the mess Yuuri had made of his hair when they’d made love, the dark blot of a hickey on his collarbone.

Selfish. He was so damned selfish. He loved that he’d left marks on Victor, and if they decided that they needed to walk away from each other…

 _If he can’t walk,_ some horribly selfish part of Yuuri whispered, _he can’t walk away from me. And it’s not like Victor will protest. He loves it when I take charge._

There was a time to possess, and a time to let go.

Yuuri positioned the frame of his fingers on Victor—his Victor, if only for these few months that he’d had him—and captured the image in his heart. He had no intention of ever relinquishing this moment, this love, no matter what they chose.

“This one here,” Yuuri said with a lightness he did not feel. “This view is worth a hundred million yen.”

If these months were all the time they had together, he’d give Victor something to remember forever. Yuuri would leave a mark on Victor’s heart that would never heal. It was the most selfish thing he could think of, his plan for his free skate program. But Victor had told him to be selfish, and, well…

Victor looked sleepily up at him. “I’m still mad at you, Yuuri. You think I’m going to melt just because you’re so damned cute?”

No. Victor wasn’t going to melt. He was going to incinerate. The truth of Yuuri’s love was a bonfire, and he wanted everyone to see. If this was going to end, it would end in fire, not tears.

“Come here,” Victor said, holding his arms out.

Yuuri would burn with him. He always did. He slid next to Victor on the bed. He let the other man wrap himself around him. He let the darkness enfold them, let Victor nestle against his chest as if they belonged together for the rest of their lives, not just this short time.

“I thought you were still mad at me,” he whispered.

“I am,” Victor replied. “But I’ll be even angrier if I can’t touch you. So just shut up and let me hold you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm now on tumblr as [shy, sweet thing](https://shysweetthing.tumblr.com).


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